Mark Ellwood's Brainy Blog of Fascinating Facts and Timely Tips

You can learn a lot about productivity from a home renovator.

We had some work done in our basement recently. It’s the kind of work that anyone might do. We wanted to fix up an unfinished room, the size of a bedroom. We needed it because we rented out our house for the summer. We would be travelling to Europe, visiting museums, exploring cathedrals and remotely conducting our time and motion study projects. In the basement a small brick wall needed to be taken down – because of some previous renovations, it was redundant. And the ceiling needed new drywall to make it into a serviceable guest bedroom.

A while back, we met the contractors, agreed to a quote, and set a date for them to begin. It was a month out because they had another job to finish. That was fine with us. It seemed like good scheduling when they had a window to do our relatively small job. Maybe a week beginning to end.

But the job ended up stretching out over three weeks. On this basic productivity measurement, the contractor failed. His company had another job, and needed to give it priority. So someone showed up at our house for two or three hours to do some work, and then poof! They were gone.

The contractor thought he was being efficient by booking two jobs at once. Do a bit of work here, wait for something to be ready, then off to the other place to nail some studs, and then back to the first place again for the next bit. Two clients at once! Busy, busy.

Waste, waste is more like it. There is a huge productivity inefficiency to starting and stopping a project. First is travel time. If a job extends out for ten days instead of five, then that’s ten extra trips (there and back) for each extra day. Most trips are at least a half hour, so there’s an extra five hours of time right there. Also, most contractors clean up at the end of each day. So that means more clean up time. And more set-up time at the beginning of the next day. All those tools that were put away have to be brought out again.

And then there is reset time. All of us need time to get refocused after an interruption. Contractors are no different.

We know another contractor who is much more productive. He shows up early in the morning and works right through until the end of the day, rarely taking a break. If something has to wait – concrete drying for instance – he schedules that towards the end of the day. If it has to be in the middle of the day, he always finds something else to do. He plans out his work using basic project management techniques. As a result he finishes on time with little waste.

So the next time a contractor quotes you – ask how many other jobs he is doing, and what he does to minimize waste. Ideally, ask for a completion date, and build in a penalty clause for every day he goes over what didn’t result from a change you requested.

Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

300 kids come to our house every Halloween. Instead of candy they get stickers and a “magic scroll”, a rolled up poem that I write every year. This year, my son inspired me to write ”The Cure For Boredom.” I’m passionate about inspiring people to spend their time on what’s most important to them. Sometimes, what’s most important is just curing your child’s boredom.
Be inspired.

THE CURE FOR BOREDOM

Mommy I’m bored there’s nothing to do

I don’t know what’s next, I don’t have a clue

I’ve read all my comics, my coloring’s done

I’ve played with my toys, they’re not really fun

I finished my homework, there wasn’t too much

Rectangles, triangles, big circles and such

I don’t want to finish my drawing right now

The one of the barn with the horse and the cow

There’s a whole lot of clay, but what should I make

A monster from Mars, or a big birthday cake?

I could build an old castle with all of my blocks

Or play that weird game with the hen and the fox.

I’m squirming around in dad’s favorite chair

I turn upside down, put my legs in the air

I might twist around all my fingers and toes

And make a strange face while I turn up my nose

I’m here all alone there’s nothing to do

I sit at the window and stare at the view

I’m bored of this boredom, I’ve now had enough

I don’t want to play with any old stuff

But what I would like when there’s nothing to do

Is just to spend time with someone like you

Let’s play with some cards, I don’t know the name

It’s like crazy eights, a really fun game

I could stop being bored I think I know how

Mom did you hear, can you play with me now?

I really don’t care what we do, you and I

Just reading together or playing “I spy”

The thing I want most from my mom and my dad

Is time spent with me, and that makes me glad

Mark Ellwood

October 2014

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

“What a waste of time!”

Do you ever hear this at work? It’s an incriminating observation for what is often just a petty inconvenience. Time was wasted, and someone is to blame. Though it’s curious how no one ever dares to take ownership of the problem. In so many cases, it’s always someone else’s fault. “That guy in the other department wasted my time. Of course I would never waste someone else’s time, let alone my own. But jeez, look at all the waste all over the place.”

We accuse others, but we toil in perfection, never attributing wastefulness to our own actions.

So what exactly do we mean by wasted time?

To understand waste, we first need to understand how time should be spent. When people are spending their time well at work, they’re doing what their job descriptions say they should. They’re managing, or selling, or designing, or processing, or teaching.

That’s what they get paid for, what they excel at, and it’s how others see them. They spend their time on the important activities that create results. These are what we call “A” priorities.

Employees also spend time on activities that support their priorities. These are the “B” responsibilities that need to get done.

Employees occasionally do things that aren’t part of their main job, but are imposed by others. These are their “C” requirements. These activities can be substantial. For instance, administrative tasks add up to about 25% of a manager’s time.

Finally, there is necessary time. At work, employees have to take breaks, eat lunch, use the washroom, and travel to customers. Anything else is non-productive time.

There is plenty of non-productive time during working hours, but that doesn’t always mean it is wasted. For instance, if you get up to stretch your legs for a moment, or gaze out the window to reflect, it would be unfair to classify this as wasted time. There’s a necessity for this. You need to relax and recharge.

So companies should expect some amount of time expenditures that are not always productive. Reboot time is just one type of non-productive time. There are others.

Time not spent on the things that should get done fall into three major categories: personal issues, work habits and corporate impediments.

Personal Issues

On occasion, employees take time from their employers. This is what’s traditionally known as wasted time. It’s the goofing off, the theft of time. This includes some of the following activities:

Personal calls

Long lunches or breaks.

Water cooler chats.

Social media chats.

Entertaining oneself.

Entertaining others

Unnecessary research

Outside interests

Work Habits

The second type of non-productive time involves poor work habits by employees who would never admit to wasting time. In fact, they probably aren’t even aware that their pace is slow. Some of their practices include:

Slow moving activity

Distractions

Poor problem solving

Poor systems knowledge

E-mail cc and virus warnings

Clutter

Administrative tasks

Lack of training

Tardiness

Not following instructions

Corporate Impediments

Many employees are at the high end of efficiency. They are not wasting time personally. Their work habits are top notch. But as efficient as they might be, they can end up wasting time because of factors outside of their control.

Equipment issues

Changing directions

Unclear mandate or job description

Major changes

Legal battles

Others’ Waste

The waste that others cause is one of the biggest reasons why employees’ time is wasted. Some of these include:

Unnecessary emails

Late starting meetings

Meetings without focus

Petty requests

Unclear communication

Mistakes by others

Interruptions

Poorly run meetings

Some waste is inevitable. It’s an expected part of the corporate environment. People will chat with their friends. They’ll daydream now and then. Things will go wrong. The office will never be a perfect place. That’s what makes it interesting. Anyone who seeks perfection is chasing an illusion.

SMARTER WAYS TO REDUCE WASTED TIME

Accept that some portion of work time will be wasted. It will probably be minor. Writing policies about how long water cooler chats should is a waste itself.

Assign meaningful work so that employees keep busy and feel that their contributions are making a difference.

Disconnect employees from anything they don’t need on the internet. Do employees really need access to YouTube, Facebook, or Pinterest at work?

Make employees accountable for their results in performance reviews and in periodic goal setting sessions.

Train employees on soft skills such as supervision, time management, communication, and problem solving.

Provide employee assistance programs for those occasions when pressures from outside work affect what goes on inside work.

Engage in process improvement projects to understand how time is being allocated and to create systemic improvements through automation, re-structuring, and centralization.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Pick up just about any time management book and you’ll find a common piece of advice somewhere near the beginning. “Conduct a time and motion study on all of your activities for a week”. This will be accompanied by a nifty table with snappy rows and impressive columns all nicely laid out for you to fill in. The text goes on to ask you to analyze the results of your time study, doesn’t give much more perspective than that.

Indeed understanding time use can be a useful diagnostic tool for understanding productivity. I’ve been running a time study consulting business since 1990, using the innovative TimeCorder device that I invented and launched in 1989. Whether you use a TimeCorder, or an app, or the back of an envelope, or a form from a time management book, understanding something about your time usage can be useful. Only when you measure your productivity can you improve it.

But once you discover that you spend ten hours per week on one of your major activities, what does that mean? Most statistics gleaned from research are only helpful when they are placed in context. How do those ten hours compare to other people who are like you? Perhaps they are similar, but do those people have the same job or family situation? Also, how has the data changed? Are those ten hours going up or down over time? Are there occasional peak periods? If so, what causes them? And how does your time use in one area affect all of the other areas? An illustration of this is when overtime hours are examined. If you work longer hours than usual during a particular week, that time has to come from somewhere else. Something has to give. More work might mean less family time, or less exercise.

When you spend more time on one thing, then some other thing will either disappear completely or become compressed. Time for meals is an example of this. With all those overtime hours, chances are you’re not eating massively lower amounts of food. You may simply be compressing your meal time. Rushed breakfasts, lunch on the go, and fast food for dinner take the place of long lingering meals over a glass of wine and good conversation. Another artifact of large amounts of time use in one area is overlapping activities. More and more you start doing two things at once. So those rushed meals are eaten at your desk or (heaven forbid) in the car while driving to work. Ask a busy mother what keeps her going, and she’ll tell you how she can feed children, speak on the phone and clean dishes, all at once.

Based on our time motion study research, the thing you are most likely to discover is that you spend fewer hours than you might like on your highest priority tasks while spending much more of your time than you would like on low priority tasks. In the work place, those low priority tasks are administrative activities; filing out reports, going to staff meetings, answering routine internal requests and other activities that aren’t part of the main thrust of your job. Outside of work, those lower priority tasks will be household chores, shopping for groceries, minor repairs, laundry, and cleaning up.

So track your time and put it into perspective. You are likely to be surprised about something. Then you have to figure out what to do next. Are you happy with the way things are or do you genuinely want to improve your productivity? A thorough time study analysis leads to insight. And that leads to results. Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

A day without any interruptions would be a very strange day indeed.

Would you really want to eliminate all the interruptions that you get? Imagine arriving at your work space early in the morning. You write out a to-do list, and then launch into your first task, preparing next year’s budget. After that, there are no interruptions. No one comes to ask you a question. Your boss doesn’t show up to assign any tasks. You check your email – no new messages. Your telephone never rings. No chats about your sports team. No meetings to attend. No requests No calls, no voice mail, no texts. No interruptions.

Everyone around you is busy. But no one interrupts you.

This would be a strange day. You’d certainly have plenty of time to concentrate. Chances are you’d also feel lonely and unappreciated.

The fact is, interruptions are necessary at work. Organizations rely on collaboration, delegation, and teamwork to succeed. As an employee, you can’t do it alone. You need to respond, to be available, to act as both a knowledge source and someone who directs action. This is true whether you’re the president or an entry level intern.

In our corporate time studies, we’ve discovered a curious irony about productivity and interruptions Many sales and service people tell us that their most important task is to provide customer service. Yet when we ask them what gets in the way of their productivity, interruptions and customer requests outnumber other productivity issues. They seem to be saying, “I could help this customer if I just wasn’t being interrupted by that customer!”

Another irony is that we interrupt ourselves. Responding to low priority emails is the top interrupter, based on actual data from our TimeCorder studies.

Face it. Interruptions are inevitable. The hassle is that they come when you’d rather be working on something else – usually a high priority task. To manage your time better, manage your interruptions so that you are in control of them, rather than them controlling you.

Some employees put up a “Do Not Disturb” sign, fending off co-workers. Unfortunately, what works for you does not work well for them. Your productivity comes at the expense of others’ productivity.

Some people put on headphones to ward off interruptions. They say they can concentrate more on work. But there is evidence that headphones don’t help concentration. If you’re writing a report or doing data entry while you’re listening to music, then your brain has to deal with two inputs at once. The research shows that this confuses the mind.

Here is a piece from CBC Radio on privacy and headphones, including some of my thoughts.

Face it, interruptions are inevitable. Instead of running away from them, plan your day in advance. Block off time for your most important priorities. Aim to finish tasks, not just work on them. And in the middle of everything, when someone comes by for that pesky question, accept your interruptions. Then handle them quickly. Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Here are a number of defiintions of procrastination. Do any of them fit?

To voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay – Piers Steel

The intentional and habitual postponement of an important task that should be done now. – Harold Taylor

To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness. – The free dictionary

The act of replacing high-priority or important actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one brings enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time. – Wikipedia

An automatic problem habit of putting off an important and timely activity until another time. It’s s a process that has probable consequences. – William Knaus

The starting point of becoming excellent in time management is desire. Almost everyone feels that their time management skills could be vastly better than they are. People resolve, over and over again, to get serious about time management by focusing, setting better priorities and overcoming procrastination. They intend to get serious about time management sometime, but unfortunately, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The key to motivation is “motive.” For you to develop sufficient desire to develop time management and organizational skills, you must be intensely motivated by the benefits you feel you will enjoy. You must want the results badly enough to overcome the natural inertia that keeps you doing things the same old way. - Brian Tracy

Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy. ~Wayne Dyer

Procrastination usually results in sorrowful regret. Today’s duties put off tomorrow give us a double burden to bear; the best way is to do them in their proper time. - Ida Scott Taylor

Procrastination is the biggest enemy of a successfully planned day. When you get a late start, it can make one activity spill over into the time allotted for the next activity, causing a domino effect that leaves many items on your to-do list undone. – Julie Morgenstern

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin. ~Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin. -Victor Kiam

Procrastination is a tough time robber to overcome. It is a real test of our commitment to apply sound management principles to a problem area…we must analyze what we procrastinate about, what interruptions and excuses we find to get out of doing that difficult or unpleasant task. – Jack D. Ferner

Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday. – Napoleon Hill

When procrastination becomes a persistent habit, it is a serious threat to professional and personal success. – T. Bittel

Proximity to temptation is one of the deadliest determinants of procrastination. – Piers Steel

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

What really bugs people about productivity?

We conduct time and motion studies using our proprietary electronic TimeCorder device, gathering thousands of hours of real-time data from employees.

We like to complement the time study results with additional data, so we often provide employees with a brief questionnaire prior to beginning a study. One of the questions asks: “What things, outside of your control, get in the way of your productivity?”

The idea of this question is that some productivity inhibitors such as procrastination are within employees’ control. Some are outside their control. Or apparently so. It’s our contention that many of these hindrances can in fact be managed by employees through better time management training. Nonetheless, employees often believe productivity is spinning out of control through no fault of their own.

The most popular responses to the question are listed below.

RESPONSE

%

Paperwork / administrative tasks

19%

Customer requests – service / problems / complaints

17%

Computer / system / equipment problems

16%

Phone calls / phone interruptions / inquiries

15%

Other departments inefficient / make mistakes

10%

Interruptions

8%

Meetings – too many / too long / unnecessary

7%

Staffing / HR issues / changes / people absent

6%

Changing priorities / ad hoc / unplanned projects

5%

Customers without appointments / walk-ins

5%

Volume of work / not enough time

4%

Requests from peers / other departments

4%

Volume of E-Mail

3%

No response / nothing

3%

Traffic / Travel

3%

Fire fighting / emergencies

3%

Doing other people’s jobs

3%

Environnent – noise, cold, location, privacy

2%

Communication difficulties – internal

2%

Difficulty reaching customer, getting information

2%

Procedures / policies / compliance

2%

Questions from staff

2%

Lack of information / missing information

2%

The top-rated item deals with paperwork and general administrative tasks. Interestingly, respondents are rarely very specific about this. It isn’t monthly reports, or weekly expense accounts that fluster them – just general administrative tasks, of which there are many.

The second response, dealing with customer issues is ironic because many of the people who respond to this question provide customer service as part of their job. The same customers that employees serve are also perceived as getting in the way of their productivity.

Computer systems and equipment problems are third highest on the list. Despite massive investments in technology over the last twenty years, technology gone wrong continues to be an issue for many employees. Connections are slow, software is buggy, equipment doesn’t work, and user-interfaces are clunky. Indeed, this issue is clearly outside of employee’s control, and many organizations have little sense of the negative impact of technology.

Item number four deals with phone calls. Interruptions by phone are perceived as much more of an issue than email interruptions. It seems emails can wait, but phone calls cannot.

Rounding out the top five, problems originating from other departments are a perennial concern. After all, it’s easy to blame someone else. So it would not be surprising to go to the other departments and find that they have issues with this department. Put in a room together, the two departments might find common ground and develop simple productivity initiatives. With time diagnostics pointing out where the opportunities are, companies can impact knowledge worker productivity without massive investments in infrastructure. Sometimes the little things add up.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.